Local Government-Backed Website for Water Quality

The local government sector is leading the way
to provide New Zealanders with up to date information about
fresh water, with the launch of a new website that makes
water quality data public.

The Land, Air, Water Aotearoa
(LAWA) website www.lawa.org.nz was created by 16
regional and unitary councils that are Local Government New
Zealand (LGNZ) members, together with the Ministry for
Environment, Cawthron Institute and Massey University with
support of the Tindall Foundation.

LAWA provides a rich
source of data from more than 1100 freshwater sites local
government monitors to give the public easy access to water
quality monitoring information. It allows users to see
levels of bacteria, acidity, water clarity and other
parameters in rivers and catchments.

LGNZ President
Lawrence Yule says that LAWA being creates a single point of
data for validated New Zealand water quality information for
the first time.

“This shows how local government is
leading the way in improving access to up-to-date, accurate
fresh water information for communities and industry,” Mr
Yule says.

Regional councils measure a range of parameters
when assessing water quality including nitrogen, phosphorous
and bacteria. In creating LAWA, local government had its
data collection and processing methods validated by Cawthron
Institute, New Zealand’s largest independent science
organisation, and the Ministry for Environment.

LAWA
provides national information, regional information and fact
sheets about water quality. LGNZ Regional Sector Chair Fran
Wilde says the website can be used to share news, report
pollution or promote river-related events such as clean-up
days or riparian plantings.

“Freshwater is a vital asset
to our country and it is important that the public can see
and understand for themselves the state of a particular
river or catchment and how it may be affected by what’s
going on around it,” Ms Wilde says.

The next stage of
LAWA’s development will include publishing water quantity
and coastal water quality
online.

The quashing of the convictions of Teina Pora for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett in 1992 has shone a spotlight once again on a major gap in the New Zealand justice system.

To all intents and purposes, access by New Zealanders to the Privy Council has now been closed. Yet the number of times in recent years when the Privy Council has quashed the findings of New Zealand courts has demonstrated that we are regularly(a) jailing the wrong person or(b) arriving at guilty verdicts on grounds sufficiently flawed as to raise serious doubts that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. More>>

ALSO:

WorkSafe NZ has laid one charge against the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in relation to the shooting at the MSD Ashburton office on 1 September 2014 in which two Work and Income staff were killed and another was injured. More>>

New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters has announced his intention to stand in the Northland by-election, citing his own links to the electorate and ongoing neglect of the region by central government. More>>